The Sheffield Doc/Fest, one of the premiere confabs for documentarians to meet, announce the 2009 Award winners: “Hosted by filmmakers Roger Graef OBE and AJ Schnack, six awards were presented: the Sheffield Green Award, the Wallflower Press Student Doc Award, the Sheffield Innovation Award, the Sheffield Youth Jury Award, the new Special Jury Award and also, presented for the first time, the Sheffield Doc/Fest Inspiration award, which went to filmmaker Adam Curtis. The Sheffield Green Award honours the documentary from the Doc/Fest programme which best addresses major environmental challenges, such as global warming. The award went to The Blood of the Rose, directed by Henry Singer. The film investigates the life of filmmaker and conservationalist Joan Root.
The Sheffield Innovation Award honours a documentary which exhibits originality in approach to form and delivery of its story. The award went to LoopLoop, directed by Patrick Bergeron. The film combines images, sounds and encounters captured on a train journey through Vietnam. An Innovation Special Mention went to The Big Issue, directed by Olivia Colo and Samuel Bollendorff. The Big Issue invites users to confront the multiple factors causing the modern obesity epidemic.

I’m amazed when Twitter memes break out overnight and it’s late late late on some coast and a flurry of a dozen or more rush from the fingertips of a single writer. Although I was tempted by #unseenprequels to suggest “Jason Reitman’s Stalled On The Tarmac,” “The Blastocysts Karamazov” and “When Harry Stared At Sally’s Neck.”

“There are different signs that this is not stopping. I don’t think that anger and frustration and those feelings can go away. I hope they don’t. The attention and support for the victims needs to be continued, more than people worried about these abusers and what’s next for them, how are they going to move on — shut up. You know what? If any of these people come back, I would say, “I can’t wait to see who is actually going to support them.” That is going to be the glaring horror. Who is going to be, like, “This is a pressing issue, and we need to get them back?” If a janitor was so great at cleaning the building but also tended to masturbate in front of people, would the people at that building be like, “Yes, he masturbated, but I’ve never seen anyone clean so thoroughly, and I was just wondering when he’s going to get his job back, he’s so good at it.” No, it would be, “That’s not acceptable.” It’s fame and power that people are blinded by.”
~ Tig Notaro in the New York Times

“It’s never been easy. I’ve always been one of the scavenger dogs of film financing, picking up money here and there. I’ve been doing that all my life. This was one was relatively easy because certain costs have gone down so much. I made this film in 20 days whereas 30 years ago, it would have been made in 42.”
~ Paul Schrader